I'm willing to cut McAuliffe, the DC crowd some slack, but I hope they pick up the ball on stuff like this.
George Tenet needs to be nailed, and he set himself up in a catch-22, but only if someone calls him on it...
You have probably seen reports like this story on George Tenet's pending refutation of David Kay's findings:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20040205/ts_nm/iraq_usa_ci
a_dc
It sounds like his position is that there is still tons of work to do and that we don't really know conclusively if there are WMD on the ground, and there is still lots of work to do.
The obvious conclusion is that he is lying to give him boss cover until the November election.
But we don't have the ability to prove a negative, giving Tenet the option of always falling back on the grade-school you-can't-prove-it-isn't argument. End of discussion?
No way.
Someone needs to push him to answer why, if there are still canisters of chemical and biological weapons lying around Iraq, and possibly even nuclear weaponry, why did we pull over a quarter of the WMD search team off the job last month?
There were two rationalizations given for this (citations are below):
- These 400 were experts in conventional weapons, not WMD
- They were being reassigned to counterinsurgency efforts
I'm not an expert on military matters, but someone must be able to refute the first point. I can't imagine the skills needed to search for one kind of missile is much different from those used to search for another. In fact, when they first find missiles as has happened periodically, they don't even know what kind they are until they are tested.
Tenet has to be nailed on the second point. He claims there may be WMD that could kill thousands and thousands of people in an instant, lying around Iraq unaccounted for. But what Tenet is saying is that last month, after Saddam Hussein's capture, Iraqi insurgency posed a bigger risk than WMD.
This leaves the administration in a catch-22.
Either:
A. They are lying about the likelihood of finding WMD, or
B. They are lying about the rosy outlook for the situation on the ground they are peddling
So, George, which lie is it?
And so Dems, who is going to call for Congressional hearings on this?
____
Some links on these from last month:
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2004/0109/901262949HM1IRAQ.html
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2004/01/09/carnegie_study_calls_arms_threat_overstated/